Themes

1. Themes • Reactions to 9/11 • Approaches to War on Terrorism • Recommendations for Approaching War on Terrorism • Lessons Learned from 9/11 • Effects and Contexts of Globalization with Regard to National Security • Accounting for US Reaction to 9/11 and Approaches to War on Terrorism • Different types of scholars

2. Stephen Walt, Beyond Bin Laden Walt a realist providing proscriptions for what Bush administration should do to combat terrorism. Written in immediate aftermath of 9/11. Basically a plan based on an understanding of the realities of a globalized world, with the restraints on the US and the problems such a world generates. Understands the world in terms of states, and in terms of order and threats to order. Starts with an understanding of the international contexts, then moves to considerations of US policy.

3. Walt: Lessons of 9/11 • Maintaining US predominant position in the world is expensive • The US is not universally liked. • The most important threats to order and security are from failed states. As such, failed states are not just a humanitarian problem. • The US must have allies in order to operate effectively in the world. Observations: • As “lessons,” these are new realizations; their opposites wre assumed previously. • But why? Were these not obvious before 9/11? Previous experiences with terrorists, Somalia and other failed states, criticisms of US in Middle East, Muslim world, elsewhere.

4. Goals: • Manage War on Terrorism Coalition, which includes conferring with allies, partnerships with less than desirable regimes, compromise on various treaties, dialogue with PRC and closer relationship with Russia Action: Move into Iraq, coalition of the willing, rejection of Global Warming and ICC treaties • Get Control of WMD’s, including dealing with loose nukes in Russia and elsewhere, arms control treaties. Action: Iraq as source of WMDs

5. Goals: • Rebuild ties with Arab and Muslim World: pressure on Israel to settle Palestinian problem Action: Dealing with Iraq as spreading democracy, Roadmap for Palestinian state • Reconstruct Afghanistan Action: Weak still, still US presence 10 years after invasion

6. Problems: • Difficult to rebuild Afghanistan • Difficulty of resolving Palestinian question • More active the US is, the more likely it is to stir further resentment. Are these the reasons why the Administration did not pursue the goals Walt provides or were unable to achieve those goals?

7. Leffler: Bush Doctrine After 9/11 Leffler is an historian of American history General argument is that Bush Doctrine: • Has in its component parts deeper roots in past policies than critics allege, and is also more nuanced and potentially more effective than critics charge • But, nevertheless, as a whole it is a radical departure from the past, and as such is not a bold or particularly effective policy.

8. Articulation vs. Reality of Bush Strategy Articulation: • Emphasis on values (freedom and democracy) not interests • Emphasis on alliances (but not necessarily multilateralsim) • Emphasis on addressing global injustice as a normative goal through the mechanism of market capitalism Reality: An attempt to meld an emphasis on values with a realpolitik focus on interests Question: why? A sign of the inevitability of realpolitik? A sign that realpolitik must be cloaked with a rhetoric of values and justice?

9. Components of Bush Doctrine • Pre-emptive action as both acceptable and necessary based on threat of terrorism • Attempt to deter threats by maintaining a preponderance of power • Use power to promote democracy and freedom as well as deter threats and keep peace • Articulated as “a balance of power that favors peace” (and thus as a mixture of realist with Wilsonian conceptions)

10. Historical Roots of Bush Strategy • Cold War policy really not of containment, but of gaining and maintaining a predominance of power that would lead to the transformation of the Soviet Union. • Cold War and other instances of unilateral actions • Long history of pre-emptive actions to eliminate threats, particularly in Latin America, and articulation of doctrine of preemption in Clinton administration. • Emphasis on democratic peace that goes back to the 1980s. Question: accurate understanding?

11. Critique of Bush Doctrine • Wilsonian and subsequent pursuit of democracy and freedom linked to a community of power that emphasized self-determination and international institutions, as well as international law, not unilateral predominance and hegemony. • Balance of power implies equilibrium rather than hegemony and predominance, and assumes US balancing, not being balanced against • Balance of power also assumes states, not the transformation of states or engagement with failed states. • Threatens existing community of power without putting anything positive in its place. Thus it does depart from historical policies as a whole and is not coherent.

12. Pateman: Globalization and American Exceptionalism Pateman a New Zealand scholar Argument: 9/11 showed that the US, due to globalization, not exception in its security; as with everyone else, it is vulnerable to terrorism. But Bush responded with an articulation of American exceptionalism that emphasized unilateral rather than multilateral approaches to the problem. In doing so, he followed a developing trend in US foreign policy that emphasized unilateral exceptionalism and was unable to fully digest the implications of globalization. Thus: • American policies incorporate an understanding of exceptionalism • The question is whether that understanding will lean toward unilateral or multilateral approaches. • Affected by development of policies and incomplete American globalization

13. Roots of Exceptionalism • American creed that asserts that as nation embracing liberal values, the US has a unique role to play in the world • Geography and wealth • Continuing influence from early history forward of moral and particularly Christian principles.

14. Effects of American Exceptionalism • US understood as not just unique, but exemplary– an example and role model for everyone else. • US has a duty to spread American values • Nationalism expressed as national pride and belief that US best nation in the world. • Provides a lens for understanding foreign policy, in that roughly before WWII, exceptionalism grounded an isolationist reluctance to become involved in the world, and after WWII grounded a policy of involvement in ordering and transforming the world.

15. Globalization The contemporary understanding of exceptionalism is being deployed in world that is undergoing globalization and has seen the end of the Cold War: • Globalization may have had as much to do with the end of the Cold War as US actions • No more superpower conflict • Unipolar world • Great links among countries and citizens; porous bounaries, shrinking distances

16. Early Responses to End of Cold War and Globalization Bush I administration: between a skeptical view of globalization (it changes nothing important) and a transformational view (states still important, but they must operate differently than before). • Strategy was to further globalization in the understanding it meant Americanization and the spread of American values. Operated on the basis of a generally inclusive and multilateral approach to spreading freedom, democracy, human rights, market capitalism and international cooperation. • Iraq war generally multilateral, approved UN intervention in Somalia to restore order and for humanitarian purposes.

17. Problems of Globalized World that were revealed by Somalia: • Weak/failed states the main sources of instability and threats • Lack of legitimate governance is what causes civil conflict • New wars are driven by tribal, ethnic identities • Media have the ability to internationalize conflicts • National boundaries are porous with regard to security threats • Responses by the international community are largely determined by the US position

18. US Reaction to Somalia incidents • Criticism that such interventions, because they are not linked to vital US interests, should stop • Clinton administration changed strategy • More unilateral approach • Blocked UN interventions in Bosnia and Rwanda • When it did intervene, it did so through NATO and by using air power • Moves in multilateral direction blocked by Republicans in Congress

19. Project for New American Century Group of neo-conservatives who were influential in Bush II campaign and administration whose writings reinforced unilateral understanding of exceptionalism: • Prevent rise of any rival superpower • Use force preemptively against potential threats • Confront rather than contain rogue states such as Iraq • Use power and ideas to spread American values in post Cold War world just as US did in winning the Cold War

20. Reactions to 9/11 • US vulnerable despite military power and status as superpower • Not everybody admires US values or thinks US hegemony benign George Bush Responded with characteristic exclusivist, moralist, Christian understanding of exceptionalism: • World divided between good and evil • Multilaterial action only on US terms

21. Afghanistan and Iraq: Differences Afghan War: multilateral approach that led to military success– non-exclusivist understanding of exceptionalism Iraq: unilateral approach and exclusivist exceptionalism that demonstrates the ascendancy of the neo-conservatives and the problems of that approach. Also demonstrated general trend of Bush policy: • React aggressively to failed states • Exceptionalism conceptualized in terms of values • Seek international support on own terms and reserve right to act unilaterally and preemptively

22. Why this policy and why does public accept it? Policy: • Bush’s religious views • Administration’s desire for moral and intellectual clarity and decisiveness over debate and weighing of costs and benefits • Belief that US policymakers create reality rather than react to it Public acceptance: • Identity as Christians • Unevenness of US globalization: US citizens still isolated an do not experience globalization as others do

23. Problems with policy • Inability of administration to clearly define enemies • Willingness to cooperate with any state against terrorists– neglect of civil rights, return of Cold War cooperation with authoritarian regimes. • Emphasis on military means • Neglect of rule of law and liberal values in fighting terrorism

24. Desch: Illiberal Liberalism • Generally conservative American political scientist Argument: Both the origins and problems of post 9/11 approach not influence of 9/11 nor the displacement of liberal values by religion or security concerns, but the influence of liberalism itself. Left unchecked, the internal workings of liberalism turns into an illiberal hostility to pluralism and civil rights. Follows in footsteps of Hartz and others that there is a “tyrannical compulsion” in liberalism, that it responds “hysterically” to alien motives and that liberal analysis tends to see the world in either/or terms.

25. Lockean and Kantian Liberalism Lockean liberalism assumes rationality, easy political and economic development, favors democracy over order and condemns revolutions. Makes liberal policy at times utopian, counter-revolutionary and arrogant. Kantian liberalism • privileges the notion of democratic peace (that democratic nations will not go to war unless forced because citizens will restrain officials). • Privileges international organization • Argues for political uniformity (republican democracy) rather than pluralism for purposes of peace • Thus holds that states have a moral duty to enter a world order and that states in such an order may make the amoral decision for coerce other states to change their regime to accord with the liberal democratic ideal, just as individuals have the right to create a state and force others to obey it.

26. Effects of Kantian Understanding of Democratic Peace • A liberal foreign policy could morally force states to accept a liberal democratic government even if its citizens did not want it. The imperative of democratic peace trumps self-determination • While will probably remain at peace with other democracies, will be likely to engage in conflicts with weaker non-democracies • Can combine with non-liberal analyses to produce understandings of benign hegemony and altruistic imperialism • Can lead to aggressive efforts at democracy promotion • Leads to activist and expansionist policies.

27. Illiberal Responses to Terrorism • Neo conservatives are generally liberals, differing from Wilsonians only in their preference for unilateralism. So neo-conservative agenda really a liberal agenda • Overstate the threat posed by terrorism • Prefer eliminating to containing threats • Aggressive democracy promotion • Use force in humanitarian interventions • Domestically: • Curtail civil liberties based on hostility to what is not liberal • Hysteria in the face of what is not understood. Opponents who condemn liberalism must be crazy or evil because liberal precepts are rational and self-evident.

28. Solution • If the problem is liberalism, making policy more liberal will not eliminate the illiberal elements. • Must have none-liberal understanding to check liberalism. • Best solution is to have liberal view for domestic affairs, but realism for foreign policy.

29. Comparisons • Lessons of globalization: learned in 2001 or earlier? • US rejects globalization or is not globalized? • What are the roots of the Bush approach? In past policies, in American culture or in ideology? • Are the problems with American policy due to its adherence to the past or is break with the past? With its incoherence or in its liberal coherence? In its realism or lack of realism?